Hardware Support - Githubissues

I see you've got support for a couple devices including:

https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-usb-bluetooth-40-micro-adapter-tpe-usbbluv4 https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-n-usb-adapter-gnu-linux-tpe-n150usb

There are a lot more devices that you should be able to enable support for, but don't appear to have done so. I'll list them below.

I also just want to say that ThinkPenguin led the way on freeing the AR9271 and AR7010 chips. The sales pitch to Atheros's executives succeeded after an initial rejection for releasing a full set of code. It took two years just to get all the required signatures. ThinkPenguin then sold a number of USB wifi adapters based around one of two reference designs for the retail market. There hasn't actually been anybody else (companies I mean) contributing anything of significance or funding manufacturing runs in relation to the TPE-N150USB wifi adapter. The other two important people in making this code release happen were Adrian and Luis who were working for Atheros at the time (they're both big freedom people). ThinkPenguin's sales actually make up a decent even if still fairly small percentage of the overall market. Unfortunately the costs of designing and manufacturing products from scratch (or even partially so) are enormous and if we want to have a positive impact there needs to be more people purchasing and supporting these efforts rather than contributing to companies who do nothing for freedom and/or are defrauding people and/or merely pulling off public relations stunts. It might be hard to see, but progress is being made on some engineering fronts, and simultaneously we're seeing regressions occurring elsewhere as well (wifi). While there is a manufacturing run coming up there are new problems around the corner and not enough support from the community to fix these issues. It's kind of humorous considering that if every user of GNU/Linux bought a wifi adapter it would actually solve the problem, but as people spread there money out over many different companies there ends up being an insignificant demand for any one company to care enough about solving the problem.

I miss any sources to those claims, especially how thinkpenguin would buy from atheros directly as they don't manufacture any of those products themselves. This would make a great blog post story or sth, but this all reads like a sales pitch for thinkpenguin.

F.e. regarding the AR9271, thinkpenguin wrote in an older description to the TPE 150 their model is a rebrand of this unex dongle: https://unex.en.taiwantrade.com/product/575975 - they sell at 11$ per piece for a package of 2500 units (you have to write sales though)

Thats a 400% increase in price while you can get the base chip on an industry design for around 10$ even as a consumer on ali. I know only some americans that would buy hardware there because the seller is "free" and ships to them within days disregarding the markup. Most others will just check where to get a compatible chip delivered fast and/or cheap - and thats totally fine.

Therefore i vote to remove this post without further sources from a new zero-commit github account. Every dev around here who spends his time WITHOUT GETTING PAID on projects like this is the last guys you want to guilt trip into buying rebranded products with markups one order of magnitude above ali.

Edit: 69$ for an USB 56K dial-in modem - that has to be a joke. Desktop Microphone for 50$ - ... 50$ too for a ANALOG USB sound card, Thats not even 5$ on ali, you can get those for 4€ shipped within europe or for 8€ on amazon https://www.amazon.de/Sabrent-Soundkarte-External-erforderlich-AU-MMSA/dp/B00IRVQ0F8 which will be the exact same chip and will work just plug&play on any linux host.

@chris00001 Your last activity is on an apple cups driver about a label printer - i doubt you have any regards about "freedom" with the hardware you use and using a label printer is typical sales activity.

This is just spam advertising a reseller. Most of the products listed are already supported in PrawnOS (and any other somewhat recent distro) anyway.

Account is most likely just founder of thinkpenguin.com Christopher Waid. If you have the funds and want to support freedom respecting hardware, why don't you chip in with some infrastructure for CI/CD and apt repository hosting?

@chris00001 I don't think anyone would buy the devices just to flip one kconfig option. If you really want support for those devices in PrawnOS make a pull request with those devices supported. Also no ARM chromebooks support M.2 or mini-PCIe devices.

@rk-zero

Wow- nobody claimed that. Most products are manufactured under contract. What's your beef? Seriously. That doesn't change the fact that Atheros worked with ThinkPenguin on the project:

https://www.fsf.org/news/ryf-certification-thinkpenguin-usb-with-atheros-chip

"rebrand of this unex dongle: "

Seriously? You have no idea what you are talking about nor how much time went into getting a complete set of source code released. The dongle in question is based around a reference design that was manufactured under contract by unex for only a handful of companies of which was primarily ThinkPenguin and Sony. The first manufacturing run was done for ThinkPenguin and Sony. Each one of these manufacturing runs costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and TP is the only reason these adapters are still being manufactured in volume today. TP is not the only company who benefited from the source code release or for that matter sold an adapter with the AR9271 chip or AR710 chip. Other adapters with these chips have been sold by both TP and other companies. TP is the only company that has ever had a significant run of stock manufactured of the adapter in question however. Of two other companies that contracted for an adapter based around this same reference design one was Sony which had Sony branding and another was for some audio company. In fact if you ever tried to acquire a large number of adapters from unex directly you'd have been referred to ThinkPenguin. If you want to get technical though there was actually another two companies involved in manufacturing upstream of unex, but you wouldn't know that now would you?

Now there was an incident where some number of rejects with unex branding got leaked onto the market. An unscrupulous individual sold them to a company in Europe which initially intended to sell them all in one batch to another company. The later company rejected them after testing a smaller batch and the sale fell through. Then maybe a half dozen or so were sold at online retail over about a month, followed by one man buying a small quantity to sell through his online business. Those adapters should never have hit the market and most of that stock that got acquired initially by that first EU firm was destroyed.

Now you very well may have received an adapter with some other product from some other company, but I can tell you that I know with almost a 100% certainty that it went through ThinkPenguin. Outside of Sony and that one audio company all other adapters were manufactured for TP and the sales went through TP.

"F.e. regarding the AR9271, thinkpenguin wrote in an older description to the TPE 150 their model is a rebrand of this unex dongle: "

What is wrong with you? ThinkPenguin has never written that and it's a false statement.

https://unex.en.taiwantrade.com/product/575975 - they sell at 11$ per piece for a package of 2500 units (you have to write sales though)

Do you have US $100k? None of this contradicts what I've said. Go ahead and reach out to them. I know for a fact that they won't sell you 2500 @ US $11 / each despite what this says and they will refer you to TP. They have a higher MOQ quantity for manufacturing so unless they happen to have some leftovers from another run this is really just misleading info. They do not typically even have 2500 units on hand because they don't sell them at retail. They are not a warehouse. You are probably looking at 10k units + and you can't even get that now even if you wanted to. They literally will not under any circumstance manufacture them for you short of some insane demand. I forget exactly what the numbers are which would be required, but if memory serves me right they're going to ask for you to sign a contract for something like 500,000 units / year which basically means you'd have to have 100% of the GNU/Linux market which needs a USB wifi adapter. Chances are you can't do better than 5%.

"Thats a 400% increase in price while you can get the base chip on an industry design for around 10$ even as a consumer on ali. I know only some americans that would buy hardware there because the seller is "free" and ships to them within days disregarding the markup. Most others will just check where to get a compatible chip delivered fast and/or cheap - and thats totally fine."

First off- that's entirely untrue and a malicious lie. TP operated a warehouse out of Europe and had shipping times in the 1-5 day range until very recently. The prices also include taxes so blame dumb legislation and thievery- not TP for the price you are seeing. There is a cost of doing business which you are not taking into account that drives up prices. The costs for a business who does nothing but resale might not have as much overhead, but then, if you don't care about free software why are you here? There was two years of energy spent working on getting code released, work toward getting support into GNU/Linux, and funding for various free software projects.

You can't even get an adapter with an AR9271 chipset in it any more outside of old stock, used adapters on eBay, and ThinkPenguin directly. ThinkPenguin is literally the only company still manufacturing adapters with it. If a company were to place an order with a factory to manufacture today it would have a cost increase of about a factor of 4x so you would probably be talking about an US $80 adapter at retail.

"Therefore i vote to remove this post without further sources from a new zero-commit github account. Every dev around here who spends his time WITHOUT GETTING PAID on projects like this is the last guys you want to guilt trip into buying rebranded products with markups one order of magnitude above ali."

ThinkPenguin has contributed more to free software development than any other company of its size. The companies marketing budget is one big donation to free software projects. It's something in the ballpark of three quarters of a million dollars over the last 5 years.

"Edit: 69$ for an USB 56K dial-in modem - that has to be a joke. Desktop Microphone for 50$ - ... 50$ too for a ANALOG USB sound card, Thats not even 5$ on ali, you can get those for 4€ shipped within europe or for 8€ on amazon ttps://www.amazon.de/Sabrent-Soundkarte-External-erforderlich-AU-MMSA/dp/B00IRVQ0F8 which will be the exact same chip and will work just plug&play on any linux host."

Your failing to recognize why that is (cause somebody had to actually do the work to make that product work!!!) and the value in obtaining a supported product from a company actually contributing significant amounts of money and resources to improving the documentation, support, and funding free software projects and engineering efforts to develop free software consumer electronics. Many of the products are based around reference designs and/or are third party developed (umm if you look they clearly say on many products the manufacturer like "HP" printer or Acer monitor, or whoever, but more specifically it can be misleading to list upstream model numbers because models will often have different chipsets depending on when and where you buy and thus support may not even exist and not all products with a given chipset are going to work either, different device IDs, products which are based on reference designs, but modified thereby requiring MS Windows only drivers, etc), but that doesn't change the fact that some uniquely funded engineering projects are coming that will change everything. The prices are more or less in line with brick and mortar retail stores assuming you can even still get the product with the particular components and chip you need. TP manufactures and stocks a 56k modem here with a chipset that isn't being utilized in any modems currently manufactured and sold at retail, and that has some cost to it. Doing all this for a niche operating system has a higher cost to it than generic garbage that fails out of the box or 3 months later or isn't even going to work properly because its using a counterfeit chip. If you really want to mess around with a proprietary winmodem be my guest.. It's neither free software friendly nor something anybody who doesn't want to bang their head against a wall for hours on end will want to do. I'd prefer to have a source that actually sells a supported product and accurately advertises chipset info, documents that info (for others benefit), and updates said documentation regularly.

"50$ too for a ANALOG USB sound card, Thats not even 5$ on ali, you can get those for 4€ shipped within europe or for 8€ on amazon https://www.amazon.de/Sabrent-Soundkarte-External-erforderlich-AU-MMSA/dp/B00IRVQ0F8 which will be the exact same chip and will work just plug&play on any linux host."

You are looking at prices that include taxes. The US untaxed prices are significantly lower. US $35 for those in the United States and those outside who do not have taxes pre-included in the price. Stop blaming a company who is literally doing what your voting for. If you don't like taxes stop voting in politicians that increase the cost of doing business in Europe and stealing from hardworking people.

A lot of the stuff on ali is using counterfeit chips, are cheaper Chinese versions of a product, don't contain the chips advertised, etc. I can find $1 adapters on ali that have chips in them that cost $20. I wonder how that works?? ohh right they're not genuine and if you try and use them you run into drivers that "work", but issues that make the product unusable. There is a value in having hardware that has been properly vetted and evaluated and code contributed and bug reports filed and so on.

"Your last activity is on an apple cups driver about a label printer - i doubt you have any regards about "freedom" with the hardware you use and using a label printer is typical sales activity."

Sorry I value my privacy and I'm not a fan of GitHub and resist social media and similar centralized platforms. Most of my contributions have been indirectly made and have gone through others. I do not like using centrally hosted platforms like GitHub. You know who owns GitHub? Microsoft. Most of my work is contributed to projects NOT host on GitHub. Ever heard of "Fork Me On GitHub?", well I prefer the other tag line "Don't Fork Me On GitHub".

"This is just spam advertising a reseller. Most of the products listed are already supported in PrawnOS (and any other somewhat recent distro) anyway."

That's great! Now which ones? If PrawnOS is to matter it helps if people have somewhere to go to acquire hardware for the system that isn't going to be a fishy scam.

I'll remind you that ThinkPenguin is the only reason you even have support for wifi using ANY wifi adapter on most (hmm wait, no ALL) of these PrawnOS supported devices. Sure- you can continue to badmouth the very company you're relying on or suck it up and admit your just wrong. There is a reason that PrawnOS can support at least some of these components and it's because TP has been effectively fundraising through selling hardware for the last 10+ years to raise money to fund free software development efforts.

@Maccraft123

"I don't think anyone would buy the devices just to flip one kconfig option."

Nobody was suggesting that.

"If you really want support for those devices in PrawnOS"

I don't. At least not at the moment. I haven't even bought a system that will run it yet. I was just trying to make a tiny contribution based on a request from elsewhere and I get this over the top reaction from one person with a misplaced anger issue. Why would I want to contribute to a project where people yell at you for attempting to help? I won't assume everybody is like this here, but.. it's not a good look if you want contributors. Assuming the worst is usually just asking to drive people away.

That said if you want information I'm happy to obtain it and contribute more info that would be useful to enabling support for more devices on request. The hardware support should already be in PrawnOS more or less. It's just a matter of enabling the right flags as you seem to have hinted already.

I like what PrawnOS is seemingly trying to do, but I'm not going to let someone attack me like this. I will not stick around where I'm not welcome. The product pages I linked probably mostly already have sufficient information to enable support for more free software friendly hardware than appears to currently be supported and that includes non-ThinkPenguin hardware.

" make a pull request with those devices supported. Also no ARM chromebooks support M.2 or mini-PCIe devices."

Yea, well, that's not actually true, but I'll give you that there are no ARM chromebooks supported by PrawnOS (yet?). There were some early ARM Chromebooks that had mini PCIE slots. Can't recall if it was full or half height. I'm not sure about M.2. One developer whom I work with that does a bit of development for ARM would probably be more knowledgeable about the details of various ARM systems on the market than I. Some of these devices utilize the USB bus on M.2/Mini "PCIE" so it's not inconceivable that there would be an ARM device with support potentially even if the SoC lacks PCIE. I'm pretty sure there are some that have M.2 4G modems although maybe I'm wrong and they're using an SoC with 4G modem integrated.

More unbacked claims. Oh, FSF endorsed your dongle once (7 years ago), congrats. Yeah, maybe it was minifree selling the dongle with clear signs of rebrand. Still your dongle is a (surprise, using a label printer) rebranded unex dongle. You don't manufacture anything yourself, just sell what is already supported. No one owes you buying this shitty stuff.

I moved more $$ in hardware every a day than you do in a year (ok business kinda low for you rn) before going into OSS. Guess why? Money will just make you a bitter fool, resistant to new ideas. Its not our fault your business is failing, its you failing to move with the world. Sell better stuff! Actually contribute maybe? Doesnt have to be in code!

You can buy broken chromebooks on the cheap from your "connections" and fix them, will return you at least 200% (oh i forget, thats way to low roi for someone who is as great and freedom loving as you). Have business exp? Help people at minifree out with shipping and employees. Ask around what people are missing. Don't ask what OSS can do for you, ask what you can do for OSS.

Create a fork, submit a PR - it's that easy. If you want broader support just contrib to mainline upstream.

You don't have to take my points seriously, seems like next to none donations are coming in for your boring podcast: https://bitcoinwhoswho.com/address/1PrGgvU85gtvi7cFZXcSuZB8vvPQtMnSS8 which should speak volumes to what the world thinks about what you have to say.

Edit: No one will look back if you change your course. Most around here starting getting mad in their job and sat down on their asses, accepted they are just a stupid bloated ego and picked up a book. Why not join #libreboot on freenode, there is a plethora of former hate spouting idiots there that started to read and grew as a person.

@rk-zero

I think I've realized why you reacted this way now. You're that crazy Romanian dude who sold the faulty adapters I was talking about above! You like tried to clone TP! Ha. I guess it didn't work out so well for you. Rather than trashing your competition maybe you could try being nice once in a while and IDK maybe you'd get funding for your own free software projects. Might help to move out of the EU as well. The EU is impoverishing its citizens. There is actually a lot of money out there now. It's not that hard to get a hold of it. Not like it use to be anyway. There have actually been millions of dollars flowing into free software projects like this from a variety of sources over the past 4-5 years. Some of them have been embarrassing wrecks and still managed to pull in significant dollars.

"Yeah, maybe it was minifree selling the dongle with clear signs of rebrand. Still your dongle is a (surprise, using a label printer) rebranded unex dongle. You don't manufacture anything yourself, just sell what is already supported. No one owes you buying this shitty stuff"

You got me. You may be wrong about everything- but I can agree that TP sucks at branding and marketing. Maybe some TP money should be redirected from funding free software efforts and be put into proper branding. NOT! This would also conflict with your bitchy little whining about how nobody is funding your worthless ass. Your problem is your a dick.Your a dick to your customers your a dick to other people. Stop being a dick and maybe the next time there is funding available people would make an effort to reach out to you about the 10s of millions of dollars they got in free money earmarked for free software projects. What is humorous is even the other little bitch got paid and so did at least one other worthless project. If he could manage it (though unlike you the other person I'm thinking about is not a dick) you should be able to too. Just shut up once in a while and stop behaving poorly to those who could potentially help you.

"I moved more $$ in hardware every a day than you do in a year (ok business kinda low for you rn) before going into OSS. Guess why? Money will just make you a bitter fool, resistant to new ideas. Its not our fault your business is failing, its you failing to move with the world. Sell better stuff! Actually contribute maybe? Doesnt have to be in code!"

OK- so I was right. Well, you are the Romanian ass hole. Seriously- TP has been around longer, has better friendlier employees (you still working out of your mom's basement?), actually cares about free software, and is doing more than you could ever hope to do. The problems that need solving most of all right now are largely engineering problems. They don't get solved overnight. They're not entirely software projects and you're failure to realize that is whats going to result in your demise eventually. You can only clone, copy, and I would say steal, but copying isn't theft, your way to success to a certain point (not that I think you've even succeeded here). Eventually you got to pick up some new social skills and work with other people on projects you may not entirely agree with. I'm ashamed for lowering myself to your level. The mom joke was a bit much. Sorry. Will try to refrain further.

"You can buy broken chromebooks on the cheap from your "connections" and fix them, will return you at least 200% (oh i forget, thats way to low roi for someone who is as great and freedom loving as you). Have business exp? Help people at minifree out with shipping and employees. Ask around what people are missing. Don't ask what OSS can do for you, ask what you can do for OSS."

You have zero business skills. I'm not against fixing broken chromebooks entirely- I wouldn't have posted here if I thought that, but you're not going to be able to make a business out of selecting select chromebooks to sell and turn that into a means of funding serious efforts at solving low level problems. We don't need more developers. We need more funding for engineering projects so that we eventually have chips and cost effectively solutions to manufacture devices that don't fail on people after 2 years because a certain manufacturer utilizes proprietary components or software company discontinues support for said hardware.

I like LibreBoot, and I like PrawnOS, but they're not going to solve the fundamental problems without focusing on getting code released for wifi chips, SoC's, GPUs, and other components. Nor are they going to bring in the funds needed to cover the costs to that end. That doesn't mean the efforts are worthless, but they're not the only thing that matter.

If you want the prize (free software) sometimes taking the slower roundabout path (may not be entirely free even) is the difference between appearing to be doing something (hacking on code that will never be useful in an entirely free system) and actually doing something (like funding engineering efforts to solve the high costs of manufacturing devices that negatively impact the ability of our community to get free software friendly hardware manufactured since nobody can currently do so at a price where it can at least break even if done). Too many people are basically taking advantage of others to advance personal agendas (usually profit) and attacking the very people that are actually doing something.

"You don't have to take my points seriously, seems like next to none donations are coming in for your boring podcast: https://bitcoinwhoswho.com/address/1PrGgvU85gtvi7cFZXcSuZB8vvPQtMnSS8 which should speak volumes to what the world thinks about what you have to say."

At first I didn't know what this was. Then I realized how humorous it is. So you are in part right. The podcast hasn't got the following of FTL and FD is only accepting crypto for donations of which isn't likely to be much if anything given a tiny fraction of world's population even have any crypto. So why would few or no donations surprise you?

What makes this funny is that the podcast is a spin off of a nationally syndicated radio show that has dozens of paid hosts, airs 7-nights a week, airs on over 200 radio stations plus satellite across I believe Europe and Africa, and maybe South America, plus some other outlets I don't even recall. Yea- with that kind of an audience you don't need donations cause you have ADVERTISERS with advertising packages in the 100s of thousands of dollars range. There is another couple thousand dollars a month from donations as well. FD also airs on a handful of radio stations and other outlets plus the LRN network.

Next time try harder. If you knew anything TP has furthered the advancement of GNU/Linux and users everywhere via a bunch of ways I didn't even realize until you mentioned this. No other show covers GNU/Linux and free software AND airs on over 200 freaking radio stations!!!! It's not only GNU/Linux and free software that gets talked about, but it's covered fairly regularly.

Shit. Man do you know whose behind a decentralized free software replacement for Uber, Lyft, Doordash, and a ton of other companies apps??? It's TP. It'll probably eventually end up in fdroid. TP also funded fixes to applications like Edge Wallet- which is one of the few and only significant free software multi coin cryptocurrency wallets. TP also helps with a ton of other free software projects nobody is aware of cause its not advertised anywhere. Maybe if you listened to FTL or FD or got to know people at TP you'd know just how much is being done behind the scenes.

"Edit: No one will look back if you change your course. Most around here starting getting mad in their job and sat down on their asses, accepted they are just a stupid bloated ego and picked up a book. Why not join #libreboot on freenode, there is a plethora of former hate spouting idiots there that started to read and grew as a person."

Some people have better things to do than sit around and chat on IRC all day. Ya know- like this conversation here isn't productive. It's just one huge waste of time and that's basically what IRC, Telegram, Facebook Twitter, Mastodon, Matrix, and all these social networking ish type apps and sites have become. A big waste of time. You want to be productive and get something done? Stop typing. Go work on something actually useful. And I do mean stupid pointless angry messages on forums, social media, and wherever else you get into arguments with people on stupid shit that don't matter.

Locking the issue for now while I try and sort out the myriad of claims made here. I don't appreciate the way this discussion is being handled. PrawnOS is not the place for this. Will revisit this following the holidays.

SolidHal / PrawnOS

Hardware Support #266